Page 46 of Hot Blooded

Shaking, she sank down to sit on the bottom step, leaning against the wall for balance, curling her sweaty hands into trembling fists.

“Tessie?” Ma asked, suddenly sounding uncertain. “Baby, are you alright?”

Tessa couldn’t remember the last time her mother had called her “baby.” It made the dying feeling worse. She slid off the step so that she could lay down on the floor. Her heart was going to pound out of her chest. All her senses seemed far away, muffled.

“Baby!” Ma cried, racing over to her. “Jesus, what— Tessie? What do I do? Do I call nine-one-one?”

“No,” Tessa managed to say between gasping breaths. “I’ll—I’ll be okay.” She’d only just managed to dig the family out from under the strain of Dad’s medical debts. There was no fucking way she was paying for the cost of an ambulance ride just because she was bad at managing stress.

“I have to,” Ma said frantically, wringing her hands. “I’m gonna call.”

“No!” Tessa managed to yell firmly enough to stop her mother. “Don’t call.” Though she would have rather remained on the floor, she pushed herself up to sit so that Ma would stop panicking. Leaning against the stairwell wall, she closed her eyes and focused on her breathing. She tried to think of something calming—soup from her favorite deli, the smell of lilacs, a sunny day at the beach, the financial relief of the paid-out HemoMatch contract…

And Amos. Sweet, thoughtful, steady Amos, who made her feel safe and treasured and taken care of.

Gradually, Tessa’s heartbeat slowed. The shakes eased from her body. Her vision and hearing normalized. Sticky with sweat, but otherwise fine, she lifted her head to meet her mother’s worried gaze.

“I’m fine,” she said calmly.

Ma straightened from where she’d been crouched beside Tessa. “I told you you’re working too much! You’re driving yourself into the ground. I don’t like this. I don’t like this at all. You need to stop with the overtime. You need to go back to the day shift. You need to—”

“Ma.”

“—get back on a normal schedule! You’re going to end up just like your father! God bless that man and God rest his soul, but he worked himself into an early grave, and if I told him once, I told him a million times—”

“Ma.”

“—that he needed to slow down and spend less time at work and more time with his family. And now you’re doing the same thing to me, and I can’t sit idly by and let you kill yourself like this! You need to—”

“Ma!” Tessa barked. In the second of shocked silence, she hurriedly said, “Don’t worry about it. I don’t need the overtime anymore. I went to the bank yesterday, and with the money I’ve been able to save—” She very deliberately did not explain that she had seventy-eight grand. That would require either an extremely creative lie, or the straight truth, and she wasn’t prepared for either option. “—I was able to get the mortgage out of arrears and a reasonable payment plan set up.”

Ma stared at her, blank-faced.

“The debt’s not totally squared, but it’s manageable now. You don’t have to worry about anything. And since that’s all taken care of, I’m going to get my own place.”

Ma took an unsteady step backwards, reaching for the table for support. “What?” she asked faintly.

“I said, everything’s taken care of. The house is still yours, the credit cards are paid off. Now that that’s settled, I’m going to be moving back out.”

“You’re leaving?” Ma asked in a small, hurt voice. She was suddenly the fragile husk again, the ghost who’d drifted aimlessly in the months after Dad’s death.

“Not right away,” Tessa said quickly. “But, you know, soon.”

Her mother seemed to shrink even more.

“Well, not soon-soon,” Tessa amended weakly. “But eventually. I’ll have to save up for the security deposit and a couple months’ rent to be safe.”

At that, her mother seemed to revive a little.

Simultaneously exhausted and relieved, Tessa said, “A few months, probably.”

“What, like six?”

“I don’t know,” Tessa hedged, well aware that she could not handle another six months of living with her mother. “But, I want you to be prepared for the fact that I’m moving out, okay?”

Her mother nodded, looking thoughtful. That look made Tessa nervous, but it was better than seeing her mother look totally crushed.

Tessa pulled herself up with the stair rail. “Alright, I’m going to shower and then I’m going to bed.”

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